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I actually cracked open milkshape again yesterday. I gave up modelling because there are issues with the primitives in milkshape, not setting up adjustable UVs. I used to import to lithunwrap and be unable to pull vertices around to UV map, because they'd all be stuck in the same place, meaning I couldnt seperate them and I'd have no clue which bit was which.

Anyway, I jacked the colonel Z model in the darkbasic media and used that as a base as its already nicely UVed. Then started playing with models. I made a base man for my future projects, then a base woman. Seeing as its far for fun to make a female model, thats the only one I've boned so far (wayhey!). I played around with animations and UV mapping.

Just thought I'd share it here, to see what you guys think. I guess basically all I want to know is would you be happy with this quality of model/skinning/animation in your average RPG / FPS? That's not to say I can't improve, but if you all think it sucks badly, then I'll quit while I'm behind.

The animation needs improving - it's a bit jerky, and there are issues with her neck where I was going to develop and bone hair, but then decided against it. Need to pinch those vertices back down. The texturing is also a fairly rushed job - not too much attention to detail, but decent enough.

She's around 2000 polys. She needs work. I know this. But give me some pointers.

See what you think. You'll need DIV X
http://www.kontact-kru.com/game/hardwoman2.avi

2000 polies for a character seems rather high. But, considering you don't pitch yourself as a modeller in these forums, I'd say it's rather good

quite a thick neck, but nice animation! love the arm movements!

Cheers lads. Yes, I'll try and reduce the neck size and sort it out. It was a bit messed up, but should be easy enough to pinch down. Glad you liked the animation. I'll smooth it out a bit later on.

About the poly count. I know 2000 isn't great, but with say a maximum of 4 characters on screen at any one time, that'd be alright wouldn't it? To be honest, I've never really played much with higher poly models, so I dont know what dbpro+a moderate system can handle.

2,000 poly models are fine for games with about 4 or 5 characters on screen as you said, really DBPro can handle much more than that - probably about 30,000 polygons on screen. If your level is about 6,000 polys or less then your game should be smooth as silk.

I did a test a while back with 1,200 poly characters, seeing how many character it would take to push the FPS below 50, IIRC fullscreen mode bottomed at about 30 characters, but I got about 140 in windowed 640x480 mode.


Van-B

:: gets the jibblies... the hibblie-jibblies ::
wouldn't wanna meet her in a dark ally.

could just be me, but aside from the breasts she looks like a hard bloke. might want to make here a little thinner and try to define the 'female' shape a bit more.
though bulky women can act harder than thin lasses, it ain't the bulky ones you wanna be worried about if they start on ya.

The walk animation also could do with a little work.
Normally a trick i have is you get up and basically walk around and try to figure from that; problem with women is they don't walk the same as blokes; so either a perfect excuse to get a woman to walk up/down infront of you :: coughs ::
or you could use a generic walk sequence.

if you visit Animanium.com and checkout the example, they have a walking animation tutorial. Although your results won't be quite the same it features several side pose drawing which will definately help you to create a smoother walk.

Another tip is for the skeleton creation. People 'bounce' when they walk as to get thier legs enough height they have to raise thier other one so basically you get a height bounce each loop.
From the standing position from thier pevlis area, just add a bone straight down to the floor.

Now use that as an Anchor point it'll help alot as you can use it as 'ground' level

To define UV map in LithUnwrap just
-set selection to polygoons -Select by face
-fence select your model (that one small box in upper left corner since all vertice have coordinate 0,0)
-go to Tools >>> UV Mapping and select method you want (Planar for example)

..now you can manualy edit position of vertices

to your model, I think its all right except that polycount is bit high for little bit blocky shape she have, I think that same looking model can be done with 1000-1400 polygoons.

There seems to be some problems with smoothing or UV maping or texturing at her left side in the midle of torzo. Hard to say whats wrong from shot.

And last, from her proportions one can clearly see, that you used male model as a base, since she is not femine enough. Especialy upper torzo and shoulders should be more subtle, while her ass and sides sould be bigger/wider.